We are a boutique design and technology house devoted to empowering the underground communities that give us the strength and inspiration to be professionals without compromising our roots
I forget the exact details like time and place, but it did seem to simultaneously percolated up into a kind of collective consciousness within a few of us. Granted, we did have lots of hangouts and dinners talking about how unsatiated we were with our current professional situations. Some of us were employees, some were freelancers, some were both.
Whatever we were doing, across the group of us the story was the same; we all were exceptionally good at what we do but were struggling with projects that for one reason or another left us feeling empty. I won't get into it here, but I think any one who really takes pride in their work and is not self employed can relate. The difference in our case was that instead of continually attending dinner parties where disgruntled graphic designers, photographers, and programmers sit around and trade stories about bad project managers, nightmare clients, and impossible deadlines we took a different path.
We had ideas that we wanted to transform into the tangible, ideas that really ringed home for all of us. We all grew up in the hardcore and punk music scenes and if it wasn't for the DIY ethic we would not have carved out our own paths in the world and very likely would have ended up blue collar workers. Making our own company was the next logical move, especially since the alternative really seemed like "working for the man". That is, the alternative was not much different to us as pushing excel sheets around on crappy operating systems, sure no leisure suits or casual fridays but we were still doing work that we really had no ownership over. If we don't own our work then do we really own our time? Fuck, if Ian MacKaye ran Dischord while touring full-time in a milieu of bands why should we settle for dispassionately working for the man?
So we packed our bags, and jumped on the next plane to Chicago for the SEED conference in 2008. After all we wanted to "Learn about taking control of your own work by seeking out methods to inspire new thinking and adopt unconventional ideas about collaboration and business" - heh. We'll unconventional to some at least, a lot of what they (Gary Vaynerchuk, Jason Fried, Jim Coudal) talked about seemed like straight up common sense to us; brilliant, simple, beautiful common sense. In short, inspired from what our internet and design heros talked about and the architecture of Crown Hall, we put forth some ideas about how to proceed:
Having laid the ground rules for our future together and our escape from the doldrums of working for other people, we ignored them. Our naivety and past lives as freelancers fooled us into believing we could sustain ourselves on client work. In a way, we were trapped by a mental spell that flittered the illusion of subsidizing projects we really cared about with projects that we didn't.
While under the spell we made some really awesome stuff for some awesome people. We even made some awesome stuff for some people we really didn't like. We made money, got ripped off, performed under budget, performed over budget, delivered on time, delivered late, gave too much away, didn't write enough contracts, had too many meetings, and we had too many clients. "What?", you ask. That's right, we had too many clients to do the things we wanted, working twelve to fourteen hour days left little room or mental space to bang on the things we originally set out to do, the things that we really needed to do.
I wouldn't trade it in for anything. We learned more in that time than any business, design, or technology degree could give us. While proud of the work it wasn't what we wanted to be doing and exchanging time for money feels like the wrong way to go, as a company or an individual.
So we stopped taking clients, and decided to "Get Real". We are taking some time to build the business and projects we want and not the business and projects we thought our clients needed. We are going to run with OUR ideas and and make them real. Sure we are no longer supporting ourselves with client work, but we are building something that we love and want to create, and that is all that matters.
I can't believe you read all that, you should check out the real Greater Good site. This page was created using html5, css, typekit, and github.